Family Photos

by Christina VanGinkel

The walls in our newly renovated living room are covered mostly with family photographs, but to keep from crowding the walls though, we kept our photographs in groups, situating them together in areas that still allow the room's decor itself to show. One grouping consists of a mix of family photos dating back to when my two oldest children were small. Baby picture, pictures of family vacations, one of four of us, minus my oldest son, holding an alligator at an alligator ranch in the mountains of Colorado! Others show our oldest in action on his motorcycle and of him smiling over his birthday cake. Anything in this grouping goes, as long as it is a core family picture.

The next grouping of pictures is of our youngest son doing what he loves best, and that is playing football. A few team photos, and several close-ups. My favorite in this group is of him being interviewed for television the second time he played at the dome. With football season kicking into gear just this week, I hope to add several more photos to this group in the coming months. I am also going to include one of him in front of the Green Bay Packer's field that was taken this past weekend when we surprised him with a tour of the stadium and field.

The next grouping of photographs consists again of a mixture of photographs. Predominantly family photos again, the majority of these are from the past two years and many include our first grandson. There are portraits and action shots, such as the one of my twelve year old in mid air taking his KX100 over a jump. Another shows my grandson sitting amid a pile of candy filled eggs on his first Easter egg hunt. Yet other shows him in his very own miniature recliner, that his grandpa said last Christmas just would not be complete without! A portrait studio shot photograph of our daughter, her husband, and our grandson, and a similar styled portrait shot photo of our youngest son.

Our fourth and final grouping consists of photographs of our grandson taken recently. One of him fishing (at the age of two he already casts and reels in his own pole, and is learning to both bait the hook and take off his catch!). One shows him walking on the oceanfront in North Carolina, and yet another shows him and his pet hamster Brownie. The newest addition, a close-up of him in a swing at the local park, from just a few weekends ago when he came for a visit.

We still have two large areas of wall space that we intend to turn into groupings of photographs. Call us camera happy if you will, but we are enjoying creating some groupings to share with family and friends that come into our home, as much as we enjoyed taking the original photographs! If you have a box or two of photographs, or memory cards filled to capacity with new ones, take the time to sort through them and pick the best of the best, plus a few of the ones that are just plain fun, and get them framed. What better way to create wall art in your home than with your very own family.